Question regarding lib dependencies, esp gettext

David Bruce dbruce at tampabay.rr.com
Wed Feb 27 10:42:50 PST 2008


Hi,

I recently contributed a port for tuxmath.  It uses gettext and iconv for 
i18n, as well as SDL and friends.  The currently listed dependencies are as 
follows: 

depends_lib         port:libsdl \
                          port:libsdl_image \
                          port:libsdl_mixer \
                          port:libsdl_ttf \
                          port:gettext

I'm wondering if I need to list gettext - it is not needed for "./configure; 
make; make install" for my package.  Gettext is needed to run a "make dist" 
on tuxmath, but that isn't part of the MacPorts install process, so I don't 
think gettext is needed as either a "depends_lib" or "depends_build".

At runtime, tuxmath does need both gettext and iconv, but they seem to be 
included with Leopard itself.  However, I can't say for sure if they were 
present before I installed XCode.

I take it that Portfiles do not need to list standard system libraries as 
dependencies - do gettext and iconv fall into this category?  If so, I plan 
to just eliminate gettext from my list of dependencies.

Thanks,

-- 
David Bruce


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